Muslim Women. Top row are Muslim women who choose to wear a head covering. Bottom row are Muslim women who choose not to wear head coverings. Which group is more suppressed by men? Which group is more successful in their careers? Which groups fits in better with American Culture?*
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
It was 1986, and I was in my mid-20s making my first trip overseas outside the U.S.
I was studying for my Master’s Degree in linguistics at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, where I majored in Turkic languages.
I wanted to take a year to study Turkish at Ankara University in Turkey before finishing my degree, but had decided to take a trip to Turkey first, to see how difficult it would be to live in the Muslim country.
Some well-meaning friends and family members warned me about taking the trip to such a “savage” country, pointing to the 1978 award-winning film The Midnight Express, a fictional account of an American student, Billy Hayes, who was caught trying to smuggle drugs out of Turkey and allegedly spent time in a Turkish prison where he was treated very harshly.
I did watch the film, but had not bothered to read critical reviews of it from people who had actually spent time in and lived in Turkey, and how the film was not representative of Turkey at all.
But it didn’t matter to me. I was young and ambitious, with a strong faith in God, and I decided to travel to Turkey all by myself and experience the culture first-hand. I had an American friend who was living in Ankara with his family at the time who agreed to meet me when I arrived in Ankara, and show me around.
I could only afford a ticket as far as Istanbul, which is about 8 hours away from Ankara if traveling by land. I didn’t know the language yet, but I figured I would “wing it” and figure everything out myself and catch a bus to Ankara once I arrived in Istanbul.
As soon as my plane arrived in Istanbul, my pre-conceived ideas about Turkey quickly started crumbling apart. I did not even feel like I was in a Muslim country, as the Istanbul airport resembled a European one.
I looked for the place to buy bus tickets, and found out that due to our late arrival, no buses would be leaving for Ankara until the next morning.
An older lady who was traveling with her adult son, who looked to be in his 30s placing his mother in her 50s, who had been on the same plane as me that had flown out of New York, heard my conversation with the ticket agents, and proceeded to approach me and let me know that they too were on their way to Ankara, and invited me to travel along with them.
She was well-dressed in western clothing (no head scarf), and of course spoke English quite well, having just spent many months in the U.S. visiting relatives there. She explained that we would need to stay in the airport for several hours until the bus lines started.
This woman, whom I had never met before, then proceeded to take care of me from that moment on, until we arrived in Ankara the next day, as if I were her own son.
The first thing she did was make sure I got a bus ticket on the same bus line as they were traveling on, which was considered one of the two top bus lines in Turkey (I had no idea – I thought “a bus is a bus”), among dozens that were operating at that time. Traveling in this bus was like traveling first class on an airline, as it had its own bathroom, and we were all served tea and snacks, and only stopped at the top restaurants along the way.
And I did not pay a single penny for the trip! This kind-hearted Turkish mother would not allow me to pay for anything!
So this was my first exposure to Turkey, with a huge Hoşgeldiniz! (welcome) to Turkey, and my first exposure to true Middle Eastern hospitality, which is almost completely unknown in western culture, whereas in Middle Eastern culture it is a moral value in both their culture and their Muslim religion, to take care of foreigners who are visiting, at any cost to themselves.
I have often wondered how the reverse would have gone back then, if a young Turkish male in his mid-20s had decided to visit the U.S. and then taken a plane into New York City all alone without knowing English? Would he have found such a welcome and help in NYC once he arrived? (Rhetorical question, as the answer is obvious.)
This was the beginning of my love affair with the country of Turkey: their culture, their people, and oh my goodness, THE FOOD!!! I don’t know about Turkey today as it has been many years since I was last there, but at that time fast food restaurants were not common at all, and almost everything was made by hand, from scratch.
I went on to spend many years in living in Turkey, first as a student, then later as an English teacher. In 1991 I was hired as a translator to help the Kurdish refugees in Southeastern Turkey return home to Iraq, after the first Gulf War.
Learning Turkish was so easy, because everyone in my neighborhood in Ankara, from my neighbors in my apartment building, to the shop keepers on the street, all took delight in spending time with me, always helping me learn Turkish as we sat and drank Turkish tea.
They felt honored and appreciative that an American would actually come to their country and learn their language. When I walked into a new shop and would speak a word or two of Turkish to try and communicate what I wanted, without fail the people working there would exclaim “Your Turkish is beautiful!”, even though I knew it was not (yet), and then they would go out of their way to serve me, so astonished would they be that an American would actually come to their country and try to learn their language.
I had to learn to love Turkish tea, most of it grown in the north along the Black Sea, and love LOTS of it, as everywhere I went they offered it to me, as they literally begged me to talk to them. It was so difficult for them to believe that an American would actually want to come to Turkey and learn their culture and language. They would invite me into their homes for home-cooked meals, and take me to their favorite restaurants, etc.
Needless to say, my pre-conceived ideas and prejudices towards Turkey and Muslims were completely blown away, and it didn’t take long for me to learn that those of us who live in the United States have been duped by propaganda and hate towards Muslims in general, and the countries where they live, like Turkey.
After spending a few years in Turkey and becoming fairly fluent in Turkish, the day came for me to return the favor of hospitality to an elderly Turkish man.
I was getting ready to board a flight from Turkey back to the U.S. to Chicago, and I met a family who was sending their father/grandfather to the U.S. to live with their relatives there. He was in his 90s, had never traveled outside of Turkey, and didn’t know any English.
I told the family that I would stick by his side and watch over him until we arrived in Chicago, and then deliver him to his family. He needed a wheelchair to board the plane, and did not walk very well.
I arranged to have my seat next to his for the entire trip, and never left his side. It was quite entertaining to sit next to this elderly man, who had never flown in an airplane before. He didn’t even know how to attach his seat belt.
When we were served our meal, I carefully explained to him what he could and could not eat, due to Muslim dietary laws. But there was one item on his tray that I did not know the Turkish words for, which was his creamer for his coffee. I assured him it was OK, but lacking the correct Turkish word, I told him it was “milk” since I knew the Turkish word for that.
He peeled off the top and proceeded to pour it into his mouth. When he finished, he winked at me and said: “That was great, but they sure don’t give you much!”
His family was so relieved when I wheeled him to them at the airport in Chicago, and we stayed friends for years after that.
Islam in the United States is NOT a Right vs. Left Issue
Former U.S. Senator from Arizona Jeff Flake (left) is a Mormon and associate with convicted child trafficker and fellow Mormon Paul Petersen (source), and is now the American Ambassador to Turkey appointed by President Joe Biden where he tried to support Turkish President (right) Erdoğan’s opponent in the recent Turkish national elections as the U.S. failed to depose the popular Turkish President. (Source.) Erdoğan is opposed by the U.S. because he is a Conservative Muslim. His opponent in the last elections was a secular, liberal moderate, whom was supported by the Conservative Right in the U.S. (Source.)
In the United States, “Islamophobia” is considered a “Left-liberal” issue, whereas most (but certainly not all) “Conservative-right” supporters, the majority of whom are Evangelical Zionist Christians, have made hate and the demonization of Muslims a matter of doctrine and political policy.
I have thoroughly dealt with the “doctrine of demons” Zionist theology in this recent article:
The Zionism Cult: Christian Churches of Satan
As I have often stated lately, the belief that an entire class of people, such as “Jews” or “Muslims”, two large classes of people represented by religion, all think, believe, and act the same, is called “prejudice” and “discrimination.”
There is little doubt that Muslims are prejudged and discriminated against most by Zionist Christians (although not all of them) here in the U.S.
Every day I see articles in my newsfeed from the Conservative Right alternative media that condemn ALL Muslim people, with names of their publications including names like “Bare Naked Islam” and “Jihad Watch”, where they refer to all Muslims as “terrorists” or evil people.
These Zionist Christians pretend to be experts on Islam and what it teaches, claiming that the goal of Islam and the Quran is to kill Christians and setup Islamic law in their countries.
But I wonder how many of these self-proclaimed “experts” have ever actually met a Muslim to confirm their rhetoric, or ever visited a Muslim country?
Sadly, because the propaganda of Western politics effectively divides our public between “Left and Right”, with anyone daring to question the Western view of Islam labeled as “liberal,” I can already anticipate the attacks and hate comments and emails that the Zionists will attempt to post here, who will claim that I am a “liberal” and a supporter of Islam.
The idea that someone can be neither “Right nor Left” but actually think for themselves and follow the evidence to wherever it leads, is a foreign thought to most Americans.
I can have a love and appreciation of Muslim people without belonging to their religion. In fact, for those who follow my writings and actually know me, know that I do not support ANY religion at all, including Christianity.
All religions are basically part of the Satanic world order, and weaponized by Satan himself.
And the prejudice runs both ways.
When my family lived for a while in Southern California, we participated in a “Conversation Cafe” to help foreign students coming to the U.S. learn English. It was held at a Christian University, and the foreign students who did not get high enough scores on their English entrance exams were required to take English classes first. The “Conversation Cafe” was a volunteer group for Americans who wanted to help these students learn how to speak better English.
One week a large group of Saudi students came into the program, and many of them stuck around for the “Conversation Cafe.” Most of the American volunteers were too afraid to talk to these Saudis, but I soon developed a rapport with a bunch of the guys after I told them I used to teach English in Saudi Arabia at one of their universities.
Inevitably the conversation turned to religion, and one of the boys asked me why I believed in 3 gods, with one of them being “Santa Claus.” I laughed and tried to explain to him that not only did I not believe that, but that I didn’t know of a single Christian who believed that Santa Claus was part of the Christian teaching on the “trinity.”
But he was adamant in his prejudice, and the other students had to “shush” him, because he was going outside their cultural norms by arguing with someone older than himself, especially someone who used to be a professor at one of their universities. He was also probably one of the only ones in his group who was considered “religious,” as the other students seemed more interested in talking about their upcoming trip to Las Vegas, since there is no place like that in Saudi Arabia, than they were about religious topics.
When I was teaching English at a high school in Turkey, I was very popular, because not only was I teaching them English, but the faculty and the rest of the school could also talk to me because I was fluent in Turkish. The students loved me, and I often played basketball with the boys during the lunch break.
My main job was to teach these students how to speak English in class. I had a very large class, about 40 students, and it was a co-ed class with both boys and girls. So it was easy to get them to talk and argue with each other to get them to talk in English, by simply picking controversial topics, which sometimes included religion.
I knew many of their parents who had often invited me over to dinner, as I was still single then, and a single man living alone is very rare in their culture, at least back then it was.
One day as I was catching the faculty bus to school, an older grey-haired man whom I had never met before sat down next to me, and started scolding me for daring to bring up religious topics during class.
I brushed him off, as he was simply another faculty member, and had no authority over what I should and should not be discussing in my classes. Besides, he was the first one to ever say anything negative to me at this school.
Well what I did not know, but found out later, was that he was the instructor for Islam at the school. He went to a local Islamic newspaper and completely slandered me, causing quite an uproar at the school. He stated that I was promising Christian wives to all my male students if they converted to Christianity, and that I was working for the CIA, none of which was true, obviously. But it was printed in the local paper for everyone to read.
So the damage was done, and the school principal, who was my friend and whose daughter was one of my students, sadly had to fire me due to the prejudice of this one faulty member. He was extremely apologetic and sorry that this had to happen, but he said the matter was under investigation and out of his control. He didn’t actually fire me, but suspended me while they conducted an investigation. But he also told me to pick up my last paycheck on the way out, because we both knew I was never coming back to that school.
Most of the faculty there were very secular, although Muslims, and seldom went to the Mosque or stopped to pray 5 times every day. They all loved me, but this one teacher among over 100 at this very large high school, acted on his prejudice against me and got rid of me by defaming me.
So yes, I have also been the victim of prejudice against myself because of my nationality and beliefs as well. But his prejudice was, by far, the minority case, and not at all representative of the Turkish people.
How Americans View Muslim Women
I asked in the caption of the featured image for this article, which features Muslim women with their head covered in the top row, and Muslim women without their head covered in the bottom row, which group is more suppressed by men? Which group is more successful in their careers? Which groups fits in better with American Culture?
Here are the bios of the women in this photo.
* Featured image above.
Top row from left to right:
Emine Erdoğan – The current first lady of Turkey, and the wife of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey. Ms. Erdoğan chooses to wear a head covering and is one of the most powerful and influential Muslim women in the world.
Raffia Arshad – Deputy District Judge on the Midlands circuit in the United Kingdom. She chooses to wear a head covering.
Raffia Arshad became the UK’s first hijab-wearing judge in 2020 when she was appointed as a Deputy District Judge on the Midlands circuit after having pursued a career in law for 17 years. Even with a successful career dealing with cases involving Islamic law, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation, Arshad was no stranger to discrimination and prejudice in her field of work. The judge went through one of the most life-changing moments when she was advised by her own family member to not wear her hijab to an interview for a scholarship at the Inns of Court School of Law in 2001. Speaking of her decision to Metro she said, “I decided that I was going to wear my headscarf because for me it’s so important to accept the person for who they are and if I had to become a different person to pursue my profession, it’s not something I wanted.” (Source.)
Fatima Payman – Senator in the Australian Parliament. She chooses to wear a head covering.
In 2022, Fatima Payman made history as the first elected official to wear a hijab in the Australian parliament. Born to a refugee family from Afghanistan, Payman also the youngest serving Senator, the first Afghan-Australian to be elected, and the third youngest Senator in Australian history. “For those who choose to judge me on what I should wear or judge my competency based on my external [appearance], know that the hijab is my choice,” she says. “I want young girls who decide to wear the hijab to do it with pride and to do it with the knowledge that they have the right to wear it. I won’t judge someone wearing boardies and flip-flops across the street. I don’t expect people to judge me for wearing my scarf.” (Source.)
Noor Tagouri – Journalist, “mechanic and first female coach in the NFL.” She chooses to wear a head covering.
Noor Tagouri is a hijab-wearing journalist and activist. Born in 1993 to Libyan parents in West Virginia, her family moved to Maryland, where she grew up and found her passion for journalism. “I just knew that I wanted to ask questions for a living,” she recounted to Vogue Arabia. Tagouri went on to study Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland at 16 years old, where she landed an internship at CBS radio a mere year into her studies. She is the brainchild behind a thought-provoking documentary series A Woman’s Job, which explored females working in male-dominated industries. Occupations included a female mechanic (who runs a beauty bar attached to her car shop), as well as the first and only female NFL coach. (Source.)
Bottom Row: Muslim women who earn their living as prostitutes or exotic dancers. They choose not to wear head coverings or modest clothing, probably because it would hurt their careers.
I am choosing not to post the websites where I got these photos, but the 2nd one from the right is from this documentary on YouTube: Muslim prostitute speaks about prostitution in Lahore, Pakistan.
I created this photo to try and show how Americans, especially Conservatives, are prejudiced against conservative Muslim women who choose to wear a head covering.
This photo is strictly for the purposes of trying to expose American prejudices, and does NOT represent whole classes of Muslim women, at all. In other words, there are probably very many moral Muslim women who do NOT wear head coverings, and there are some Muslim women, including prostitutes, who DO wear head coverings.
But the almost universal belief and prejudice of Americans who probably have never met a Muslim woman, is that they are forced to wear a head covering because they are oppressed and abused by Muslim men.
I remember one newscast from many years ago when the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan and the foreign press was in Kabul interviewing some Muslim women on the street. They were wearing head coverings, and the woman reporter from the U.S. told them: “You’re free now, you don’t have to wear head coverings any more.”
To which the women replied: “We’re Muslims. We WANT to wear our head scarves.”
Such a thought is foreign to most Americans, so strong is their prejudice.
So let me quote some Muslims here with some different perspectives that maybe most of you have never heard before. As you read and listen to these Muslims, please do so with the goal of understanding their views, and not judging them because they don’t believe the same way you do.
Why is the West so fascinated by the clothes Muslim women choose to wear?
This latest batch of research reveals more about the people asking the questions than the subjects of the survey
by Bina Shah
The Independent
Excerpts:
Last night I attended a winter wedding in Karachi, Pakistan. There was singing and dancing and both men and women mingled together under a voluminous violet tent with strings of marigolds hanging down the poles. The men wore shalwar kurta with waistcoats and warm woollen shawls. The women wore brightly-colored shalwar kameezes, saris, and ghararas (long skirts), moving around the tent like glittering butterflies as Bollywood music thumped from the speakers around the dancefloor. Some members of the family had their heads covered in jewel-toned scarves that matched the colors of their clothes. One or two of the women wore their traditional dupattas easily over their heads. The majority of the women, though, wore their hair free, blow-dried into elaborate curls or straight curtains of silky dark tresses.
This is the Muslim country in which I was born and raised, and the scene refutes the results of the recent University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research survey asking “What style of dress is appropriate for women in public?” The participants were given six headshots of brown women wearing various types of headgear, from most to least covered. Which is ridiculous, because everyone knows that at a Pakistani wedding the focus is on your clothes, shoes, jewelry and handbag. Nobody’s looking at your head unless you’ve actually decided to go punk and shave all your hair off.
The study found that few favored the type of burqa known colloquially as the “shuttlecock”, the blue bag with mesh over the eyes favored by the fashion-forward Taliban in Afghanistan. The slightly more liberated black burqa with matching face-veil garnered more support from their chic peers in Saudi Arabia. Most popular in this survey seemed to be a blood-circulation-cutting white hijab over a woman’s head, and only Lebanon favors godless women who don’t want to cover their hair at all (no surprise there, as Lebanon is considered as un-Islamic as you can get while still being Muslim).
But while the researchers thought that they were perhaps uncovering a profound truth about Muslim opinion on women’s fashion, the survey provoked a degree of ridicule amongst Muslims on social media. What purpose did asking the question serve beyond a strange Orientalist obsession with what Muslim women wear? Who was answering it, men or women? And why should it matter so much what “people” think women “should” wear – can’t Muslim women decide for themselves what is appropriate without input from an anonymous group of participants from “around the world” (in truth seven Middle Eastern Muslim countries, as if Muslims don’t live anywhere else, like Europe, America, or Africa)?
The best response to it was blogger and satirist Karl Sharro’s parody survey by an Arab university asking “What style of dress is appropriate for American women?” Six women were presented wearing these styles of headdress:
If I were writing about this survey, I would ask, in a breathless headline worthy of the Daily Mail, “So, just why ARE people so obsessed with how Muslim women dress?” In the wedding I described above, nobody thought twice about what anyone had chosen to wear; even the young girl with the scandalously low-slung sari and the tight body sheathe sequinned top that revealed her midriff and bare shoulders flitted around at ease in the gathering — the shameless hussy.
Bina Shah is a writer living in Karachi, Pakistan. The author of several novels and collections of short stories, she holds degrees from Wellesley College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Read the full article at The Independent.
Stop Telling Muslim Women How to Dress
Excerpts:
A lot of people need to calm down about this subject. Whether it’s among non-Muslims, Muslims, or fascist Islamophobes in Europe and North America, there seems to be a growing obsession with Muslim women and the way they dress.
A few weeks ago, I attended an event as part of “Islamic Awareness Week” hosted by a local university where a panel of three Muslim women shared their personal experiences and views on Islam and modesty. Two of the women wore hijaab (headscarf) and one didn’t, which apparently, I’m sorry to say, seemed enough to draw controversy.
In the Q&A discussion, a young Muslim man said something that made me take pause and then realize how utterly offensive and repulsive his comment was. He argued that the Qur’an is “not spiritual,” but rather “practical,” especially in regards to hijaab because, according to him, “the hijaab is supposed to cover a woman’s neck and I admit, when I see a woman’s neck, I get attracted.” I smiled and looked at one of the panelists, a friend of mine, who also smiled at the absurdity of his comment. I followed up by tossing the panel a question that was set up for my friend to spike the young man’s comment: “I am sick and tired of men telling Muslim women how to dress,” she said boldly. She included both the Muslim men who impose hijaab/niqaab/burqa on Muslim women and the Islamophobes who are hell-bent on banning these styles of dress.
I am familiar with the young man’s views on hijaab and modesty. I used to say similar things myself. I would see Muslim women wearing tight shirts, jeans, and no hijaab, and I would judge them in my thoughts: “Look at how she’s dressed and she calls herself ‘Muslim’?” Then I would gripe to my Muslim friends, both female and male, about how “westernized” Muslim women are becoming. I remember coming across Muslim women wearing hijaab and tight jeans and thinking how hypocritical she must be. And the reason why my Muslim friends and I were so upset about this was because such manner of dress drew lustful and sexual gazes from men. In other words, I believed that, for the most part, Muslim women were responsible for the “uncontrollable” sexual urges of men.
It was always a Muslim woman’s fault. If some ignorant non-Muslim playfully tugged her hijaab in the computer lab, it was her fault because she gave him the liberty to be that free with her. If a man was checking her out, it was her fault because she didn’t choose to wear a long shirt. Unfortunately, I find this sexist mentality to be very prevalent in Sunni orthodoxies, especially among Muslim men. The disturbing thing, in my opinion, is how I thought that everything I believed about Muslim women, how they should dress, and how they should behave was not sexist, but actually liberating because it taught Muslim women how to be “real,” “respectable” women.
Over the years, I learned that it wasn’t about liberating women. It was about controlling them and molding them the way *I* wanted them to be. The way a lot Muslim *men* want them to be: obedient, passive, soft-spoken, sensitive, reserved, etc. In my mind, it was improper and sacrilegious for Muslim women to even flirt with a man, to even make a mentioning of sex, to even have male friends. Why?
Read the full article at Muslim Reverie.
Who is Oppressed : Muslim women with Hijab or Western Society Women ?
As you can see from these brief examples, even among Muslims the topic of head coverings is controversial, among BOTH men and women, and there is no unified Muslim belief that all women have to be forced to wear head coverings.
A Syrian mother carries her two children during a bombing in Aleppo. Source. While most of the attention in the media right now is on Gaza, the people of Syria have endured constant bombings for over a decade now. The airports in Aleppo and Damascus are also currently being bombed.
How sad and tragic is it that so many American Christians and other Americans have been taught to believe that if they view a woman in public wearing a Muslim head covering, that this woman is somehow a “Jihadist” and “terrorist” for daring to proclaim her moral values, or she is being forced to wear it because her religion is oppressive and they are forced to wear a head covering by men.
I have obviously met and talked to hundreds of Muslim women during my life, and I can tell you that the majority of them view western culture and the way women are portrayed in the western media as being the ones who are “oppressed,” dressing like whores who show off their body to get ahead in a male-dominated culture.
Prejudice and discrimination against an entire class of people are wrong, and demonic.
I am appalled at the Christians who have emailed or tried to comment on some of our articles since the current conflict in Israel and Gaza has started.
In my last article I published before writing this one, I wrote:
In my own community where I am currently staying, I frequently visit a “Middle Eastern” grocery store to stock up on supplies for the Middle Eastern dishes I love to prepare, having spent many years of my younger adult life living in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, where I developed a very fond taste for Middle Eastern food.
The small store is owned and operated by Syrians, and they are part of a Syrian Orthodox Christian community, and all part of the same church.
And yet, it never ceases to amaze me how on any given day I can walk into this store and observe BOTH Muslim and Christian Arabs all smiling and laughing together, sharing their common Arab heritage. One of those customers runs his own small kabob restaurant in town, and he is a Palestinian Muslim.
But these Arab people share their common Arab heritage, and get along just fine. The Middle Eastern Christian Arab store owner makes sure that his meat is certified “Halal” so his Muslim customers can purchase it. Religion does NOT separate them at all, as they all accept each other’s religious differences.
But there is one issue that they are all united on: The loss they have all suffered from the murder and slaughter of innocent people in their homelands by U.S. and Israeli military sources who continually bomb them. (Full article.)
Shortly after publishing this a woman tried to post this comment:
Greek Orthodox churches are not Christian. Much like RCC , they follow creeds , dead works, etc as a means of earning merit.
You can be civil to others, but there’s no way a true, born again believer would embrace Islam. Your discernment on what is truly Christian just isn’t there. Those who aren’t born from above will never comprehend His truth.
This was obviously a pompous and arrogant comment of an Evangelical Christian who cannot see reality through her prejudices, and who needs to create “straw man” arguments to support her prejudices (nothing was written about “embracing Islam” or “truly Christian.”) Others are more direct:
Islam is straight from the pits of hell and is a death cult………..PERIOD!!!
You people trying to comment and emailing me with comments like this are not welcome here. Please find your news somewhere else. As I have stated many times previously, everything published here is free of charge, as we do not even accept donations. You have no “rights” to peddle your hate and prejudice here. If you don’t like something published here, just DON’T READ IT and move on.
Fortunately, I get far more positive comments and feedback then I do negative comments.
Here is one (among the many) that I recently received:
Hi Brian.
First of all I apologise for not disclosing my real name or my real email address. But believe me when I say I am a real person and what I have to say is real, coming from my heart.
I would like to express my gratitude to you for setting up this website and always updating it with latest news despite your busy schedule managing your business. Your writings have helped me immensely, and I’ve started reading the Bible after I found your website. Confidently I can say that I’m beginning to understand what it means to be lost and found by God and what it means to being blind before and now I can see.
Please allow me to call you a brother and thank you for taking your time reading this.
Yours in Christ.
The IP address shows that this person commented from a Muslim country, which is probably why they did not want to mention their name. And for those of you who may not know, most Muslims have a very high regard for Jesus Christ. They believe he is “the Messiah,” and that he was born from a virgin woman.
Yes, many do erroneously believe that the Bible has been changed, something that is actually impossible given the sheer volumes of manuscripts of the original text that exist, and the fact that God is too powerful to allow his word to be changed.
But the last thing a Muslim should ever do, is “convert” to Christianity. Same for Jews who come to accept Jesus as their Messiah. Please don’t start calling yourselves “Christians,” a term that only appears 3 times in the New Testament, and is NEVER used of the believers in referring to each other. (More info.)
Anyone can know Jesus, without belonging to a religion. Muslims have to understand that Jesus actually did die on the cross, and then rose again from the dead, as this was necessary for God to forgive the sins of mankind.
But becoming a “Christian” is totally NOT necessary at all. Anyone who puts their faith in Isa Al-Mesih (Jesus Christ) as the Savior of the world can be born again, of the seed of Abraham. See:
Who are the Children of Abraham?
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” (Matthew 5:13)
Then Paul wrote:
For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Corinthians 2:15-16)
For those of you expressing your prejudice and hate of other religious groups all in the name of God, you are the stench that smells of death without salt, and your future is very, very dark, unless you repent.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’
Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:21-23)
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